“I cheerfully obey your request for a written statement of what I related to you orally, as having been witnessed by me in Paris, last summer, at the house of a highly respectable physician, whose name I have no authority to use, but whom, after the usual French fashion of anonymizing, I will call Dr. X.
“I was introduced there by an English friend, well-known in the Spiritualist circles in London—Mr. Gledstanes. Some eight or ten other visitors were present, of both sexes. We were seated in fauteuils, occupying half of a long drawing-room, flush with a spacious garden. In the other half of the room was a grand piano, a considerable open space between it and us, and a couple of fauteuils in that space, evidently placed there to be occupied by other sitters. A door near them opened into the private apartments.
“Dr. X. came in, and discoursed to us for about twenty minutes with rapid and vehement French eloquence, which I could not undertake to report. He had, for over twenty-five years, investigated occult mysteries, of which he was about to exhibit some phenomena. His object was to attract his brethren of the scientific world, but few or none of them came to see for themselves. He intended before long to publish a book. He presently led in two ladies, the younger one his wife, the other (whom I will call Madame Y.) a medium or sensitive, with whom he had worked through all that period in the prosecution of these studies, and who had devoted and sacrificed her whole life to this work with him. Both these ladies had their eyes closed, apparently in trance.
“He stood them at the opposite ends of the long grand piano (which was shut), and directed them to put their hands upon it. Sounds soon began to issue from its chords, marching, galloping, drums, trumpets, rolling musketry, cannon, cries, and groans—in one word, a battle. This lasted, I should say, some five to ten minutes.
“I should have mentioned that before the two mediums were brought in I had written in pencil, on a small bit of paper (by direction of Mr. Gledstanes, who had been there before), the names of three objects, to be known to myself alone, viz., some musical composer, deceased, a flower, and a cake. I chose Beethoven, a marguerite (daisy), and a kind of French cake called plombières, and rolled the paper into a pellet, which I kept in my hand, without letting even my friend know its contents.
“When the battle was over, he placed Mme. Y. in one of the two fauteuils, Mme. X. being seated apart at one side of the room, and I was asked to hand my folded, or rolled, paper to Mme. Y. She held it (unopened) between her fingers, on her lap. She was dressed in white merino, flowing from her neck and gathered in at the waist, under a blaze of light from chandeliers on the right and left. After a while she dropped the little roll of paper to the floor, and I picked it up. Dr. X. then raised her to her feet and told her to make “the evocation of the dead.” He withdrew the fauteuils and placed in her hand a steel rod of about four and half or five feet in length, the top of which was surmounted with a short cross-piece—the Egyptian Tau. With this she traced a circle round herself, as she stood, of about six feet in diameter. She did not hold the cross-piece as a handle, but, on the contrary, she held the rod at the opposite end. She presently handed it back to Dr. X. There she stood for some time, her hands hanging down and folded together in front of her, motionless, and with her eyes directed slightly upward toward one of the opposite corners of the long salon. Her lips presently began to move, with muttered sounds, which after a while became distinct in articulation, in short broken sentences or phrases, very much like the recitation of a litany. Certain words, seeming to be names, would recur from time to time. It sounded to me somewhat as I have heard Oriental languages sound. Her face was very earnest and mobile with expression, with sometimes a slight frown on the brow. I suppose it lasted about fifteen or twenty minutes, amidst the motionless silence of all the company, as we gazed on the weird scene. Her utterance finally seemed to increase in vehemence and rapidity. At last she stretched forth one arm toward the space on which her eyes had been fixed, and, with a loud cry, almost a scream, she exclaimed: ‘Beethoven!’—and fell backward, prostrate on the floor.
“Dr. X. hastened to her, made eager magnetic passes about her face and neck, and propped up her head and shoulders on cushions. And there she lay like a person sick and suffering, occasionally moaning, turning restlessly, etc. I suppose a full half-hour then elapsed, during which she seemed to pass through all the phases of gradual death (this I was told was a re-enacting of the death of Beethoven). It would be long to describe in detail, even if I could recall all. We watched as though assisting at a scene of real death. I will only say that her pulse ceased; no beating of the heart could be perceived; her hands first, then her arms became cold, while warmth was still to be felt under her arm-pits; even they at last became entirely cold; her feet and legs became cold in the same manner, and they swelled astonishingly. The doctor invited us all to come and recognize these phenomena. The gasping breaths came at longer and longer intervals, and feebler and feebler. At last came the end; her head fell sidewise, her hands, which had been picking with the fingers about her dress, collapsed also. The doctor said, ‘she is now dead;’ and so it indeed seemed. In vehement haste he produced (I did not see from where) two small snakes, which he seemed to huddle about her neck and down into her bosom, making also eager transverse passes about her head and neck. After a while she appeared to revive slowly, and finally the doctor and a couple of men servants lifted her up and carried her off into the private apartments, from which he soon returned. He told us that this was all very critical, but perfectly safe, but that no time was to be lost, for otherwise the death, which he said was real, would be permanent.
“I need not say how ghastly the effect of this whole scene had been on all the spectators. Nor need I remind you that this was no trickery of a performer paid to astonish. The scene passed in the elegant drawing-room of a respectable physician, to which access without introduction is impossible, while (outside of the phenomenal facts) a thousand indescribable details of language, manner, expression, and action presented those minute guarantees of sincerity and earnestness which carry conviction to those who witness, though it may be transmitted to those who only hear or read of them.
“After a time Mme. Y. returned and was seated in one of the two fauteuils before mentioned, and I was invited to the other by her side. I had still in my hand the unopened pellet of paper containing the three words privately written by me, of which (Beethoven) had been the first. She sat for a few minutes with her open hands resting on her lap. They presently began to move restlessly about. “Ah, it burns, it burns,” she said, and her features contracted with an expression of pain. In a few moments she raised one of them, and it contained a marguerite, the flower I had written as my second word. I received it from her, and after it had been examined by the rest of the company, I preserved it. Dr. X. said it was of a species not known in that part of the country; an opinion in which he was certainly mistaken, as a few days afterwards I saw the same in the flower-market of the Madeleine. Whether this flower was produced under her hands, or was simply an apport, as in the phenomenon we are familiar with in the experiences of Spiritualism, I do not know. It was the one or the other, for she certainly did not have it as she sat there by my side, under a strong light, before it made its appearance. The flower was perfectly fresh in every one of its delicate petals.
“The third word I had written on my bit of paper was the name of a cake—plombières. She presently began to go through the motions of eating, though no cake was visible, and asked me if I would not go with her to Plombières—the name of the cake I had written. This might have been simply a case of mind-reading.